Chance Of Baseball

It is Opening Day here in our little town. The weatherman says its gonna be in the high 70’s and the sun will shine bright on us, so we better get our sunblock. This will be my oldest basset’s third year of baseball and should prove to be an exciting one. This is the first year they will actually be keeping score. This will be a bit of an eye opener for some. Before the kids were told they did great and they didn’t know if they won or lost. This year a bit of reality will set in and there will be winners and losers. Yup…losers. Sometimes you lose. You don’t always win and you don’t get a trophy for showing up. But you will get ice cream, and they will have sprinkles.

The prize trophy of former NFL football hero, part-time media personality and full-time blowhard BJ Baker has been stolen. Baker knows Miami Jones is the only one who can find it. Problem is, he hates Jones. And the feeling is mutual.

Miami takes on a jealous husband, a feisty ex-con and a police detective with a desire to see him take a long walk off a short pier, and he finds that Florida is home to so many retired footballers he could start a pensioner football league. But who is prepared to kill to get their hands on college football’s highest honor?

A powerful and provocative debut novel, GETTING THE IMPORTANT THINGS RIGHT follows the lives of West Point graduate Colonel Thomas McChesney Albemarle, III and southern debutante Lydia Rose Carlyle Albemarle (Colonel Tom and Ma’am to all) from their first meeting at the Officers’ Club at Fort Bragg, North Carolina during World War II to The Colonel’s death forty years later.While Colonel Tom physically and emotionally batters his family, Ma’am escapes the turmoil with alcohol.Their children, Percy, Sis and Oops, with no adult guidance, learn to sidestep their family minefields alone.Percy longs for a loving relationship with his father but is unwilling to compromise his aspirations of owning a motorcycle repair shop to win his father’s love.Sis wants a strong mother who will stand up to her abusive husband but finds herself in an abusive marriage, as well.Baby Oops escapes the chaos by teaching herself to read at three and retreating to her own world where abuse and parental neglect can’t reach her. Siblings Percy and Sis forge a loving bond that will sustain them through the most poignant and tragic of circumstances. Whether it’s eating an entire chocolate cake in one sitting, playing Cuss Scrabble, double dating to the drive-in movie, or stealing their father’s car to hotrod in the wee hours, the brother and sister find unbridled joy in their friendship, despite the dysfunction swirling around them.Told with captivating grit, humor, and insight, this tale of family discord carries the Albemarles through decades of turbulence until tragedy teaches them to forgive and understand by GETTING THE IMPORTANT THINGS RIGHT.

Marianne Coltrane is a feisty, award-winning journalist who is far from lucky in love. Taking herself off to the wilds of the west of Ireland to recuperate, she literally runs into Ryan O’Gorman, the most conceited, infuriating man in the world.

He’s an actor who’s just landed the biggest role in movie history and he loathes journalists. One thing they do have in common is they both think their chance of true love has passed them by… but fate has other ideas!

Sexy, moving and funny, this heart-warming duo and cast of colourful characters will stay with you, long after the last page leaves you smiling.

The distant world of Haphez is located on the edge of populated space. The planet’s native superhuman race is feared and respected by neighboring civilizations. Their military and police forces are unmatched.

Lieutenant Aroska Tarbic is an agent with the revered Haphezian Special Police. He’s lost a lot in a short period of time; the other members of his squad were killed in a tragic accident, and his younger brother was wrongfully convicted and executed for a crime he didn’t commit. Just when Aroska thinks he’s starting to piece his life back together, he’s assigned to a joint task force with a special operations team. It seems like a unique opportunity, at least until he learns that his new commander is none other than Ziva Payvan, HSP’s finest operative… and the assassin who killed his brother.

Ziva is good at her job, a business that requires her to ignore her feelings and carry out her missions without question. She’s confident in her own abilities to complete the assignment, but Aroska is a wildcard. When their team stumbles across a young human during a routine investigation, they soon realize that the situation isn’t what it seems. The boy has unwittingly uncovered an age-old plot, one that could put the entire Haphezian race in jeopardy.

Now the lines between friend and foe have become blurred, and no one can be trusted. United by the imminent threat, Ziva and Aroska must set their differences aside in order to save their people… and maybe even each other.

Completely Updated and Edited, March 2014. A quality survival kit is one of the critical keys in prevailing during a backcountry emergency. Survival instructor Tony Nester shares what essential gear to carry and how to design a tailor-made kit to fit your specific needs. Drawing upon the past 25 years of teaching fieldcourses, Nester provides a pragmatic look at the crucial elements that should go into a personal survival kit and the steps to help ensure that you don’t get lost in the first place.

Tony Nester is the director of the Ancient Pathways Survival School in Flagstaff, Arizona. His company is the primary provider of desert survival training for the military special operations community. Tony has taught fieldcourses for the US Marshals, FAA, NTSB, and served as the technical director for the film, Into the Wild. He is the author of five print books, nine eBooks, and three DVDs on how to survive in both wilderness and urban settings. He and his family live in a passive-solar, strawbale house in Flagstaff, Arizona.